


Anniversary of an uninteresting event

by Melanie_D_Peony



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Feels, Disregarding canon timeline, Dissociation, Ficlet, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, M/M, Nothing explicit but rated mature for adult themes, Peter's POV, Pining, Pre-Season/Series 03, Swearing, This is just feels, Three years have passed because I sad so, Vomiting, little to no plot, no beta we die like men, peter is not okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23391481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melanie_D_Peony/pseuds/Melanie_D_Peony
Summary: Years have passed since Peter last seen him, last thought of him. But one day each year Peter Nureyev visits a certain, singular hotel room.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	Anniversary of an uninteresting event

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fan fiction. The author does not own any of these characters.

There's a strange quality in the air, on this planet, around this time of the year and the yearning builds up on the inside of your skin like condensation. Cool trickle within the chambers of ventricles. You file it away. Like mad. The compartments building in your brain, your marrow, your heart are like maze by now. You are becoming a Russian doll of a person, Rose within Glass within Ransom. 

_Don't think about it._

And Nureyev within that. 

Don't _think about it._

And Steel within him.

 _Shit_.

Compartmentalising means narrowing your focus, until psychomotor functions are the only ones you are able to think about. The next breath after the other, the next step following the previous one. You take a breath and fill Ransom's lungs and Duke is busy bending Rex's joints. It's a precarious arrangement. A confounded web of cross purposes and entangled intentions. It lands you on the 25th of December on a planet you vowed never to return to. It's not you who bought the ticket that brought you here, it's a conspiracy of the Peters inside you. It's mutiny. 

Nevertheless, it's you who steals the uniform of an unsuspecting delivery man. You steal the costume but you buy the dahlias and the roses. You pay dearly for every single one of them. But you don't stay. There has to be retaliations following the uprising. As part of the retortion you force yourself to leave.

You'd steal a mask. You stole a disguise. 

But you refuse to steal a glance. 

Regardless, there are certain times of the year where dissociation is the only means of survival. You take some rations and you take refuge in one of the carefully crafted compartments and let your demons roam freely outside. You catch glimpses of the damage, the havoc they are wrecking. You suddenly come to and there's Glass chatting to a pretty face or kissing into a bulletproof smile. And is that Duke taking something that you never would, in a party? Doesn't matter, you are not ready to face it yet, not with the date approaching fast on the calendar. And to think how little you cared for timekeeping once. Especially when you were on Venus. 

So when your bloodstream cleans and the fog lifts you have every right to expect the danger to be over. Only to find yourself pressed into your seat by the sudden embrace of getting reacquainted with gravity as red fills the screen in front of you. 

Hyperion is nearly off putting enough to chase you away, but by then you lost the battle. The scheduled storm fills the dome's atmosphere and it feels strangely befitting to approach the hotel in the red sludge. The city's streets run with blood, rust and rain. You leave an exorbitant tip to get the exact same room and fall back on your bed, heaving despite preferring the elevator to the stairs. You are staining the clean double bed with crimson martian mud. You congratulate yourself for it. Good on you, Nureyev. It's time to stop pretending that this was your marital crib. It's not like you were deflowered in here. Sure, it felt like that, so tender, desperate and tentative. But factually it couldn't be further from the truth. 

_It's just that while you were bedded many times before, it was the first time ever that you found yourself in love. You can't help but assign some significance to that._

Oh, no. Oh, hell no.

You ransack the bar and consume a ridiculous amount of alcohol to help you convince yourself that this is not an anniversary. What happened here was a nonevent. The least interesting thing in the universe. So mundane that someone, so many people in fact, are busy doing it somewhere else, right this moment. Just plain old fucking.

 _At least that's how Juno treated it_. 

You are to erase the anticipation. How you imagined the moment over and over again in the intermittent months of waiting, pretending that you were holding him when in bed with someone else. How you still found yourself slipping into celibacy because no one burned as bright as him and all those encounters failed to live up to your expectations. How you feared, when laying flush against him, that your fantasies might still eclipse and overshadow the real thing. How you pulled him into your spaces like you expected him to sublimate from within your clasp and vanish into thin air. You refuse to deal with the fact that when it finally happened, it was everything you had hoped for and more. Because it was Juno. The real thing, not a proxy, a surrogate or a fantasy. You came here to forget the many ways in which he felt like a naked flame.

And you are certainly, categorically, absolutely not here because you expect him to turn up. You are not holding your breath, you are not straining your ear, desperate for the sound of shuffling steps, his strange gait and the way he throws one foot weirdly sideways as he walks. You are not quenching for the sound of your own name as it rolls off of his lips, like it's something he treasures. And if he marches in, a little bashful and apologetic, you are forbidden to forgive him. You won't let his intensity wash over you again. His flailing, wild, rabid heart to infect yours. You won't be impressed by the way his walls crumble in your presence and you won't go looking for him in the rubble, found being more fragile and raw than either of you'd prefer, but beautiful nevertheless. Like a freshly fallen angel, condemnation proudly displayed on his sleeves. The lady, like a shooting star, is most beautiful when burning up upon entering your orbit. 

If he were to walk in now, you would make yourself hate him. You'd ridicule everything you secretly like about him, compassion safely filed away under " _never to see it again"_. You'd call him out on his introspection, his sense of duty, his righteousness, his outlandish ideas about honor, the preposterously high standards he holds himself up to. You'd never, in a million years, berate him for thinking that he doesn't deserve everything and you would not pull him into an embrace, onto the bed and refuse to let go until you convinced him otherwise. This is not how it would play out. You are not pathetically lovestruck still, even a year after the date he dumped you. You are the disaffected thief. You are the one who comes in and leaves like a breeze. You won't be robbed of your heart and left bleeding by a detective who conducts himself more like a bodysnatcher, exiting stealthily in the dead of the night. 

You came here today to severe things and the fact that he never shows doesn't kill you all over again. It doesn't because you don't care. You came here for a stiff drink and to deface a contemptible memory and you do just that as you crawl among the sheets, still dirty from the streets as the room refuses to stop spinning. And even later when you empty yourself into the latrine, bile coming back like a confession you can't choke down. You think this purging should make you feel content, but it simply makes you empty. You take a sip of water to wash your mouth but you don't take anything for your queasy stomach. This room should hold no comfort for you. You leave the next day with your head pounding to the rhythm of your heart and your mouth still tasting awful, with the flavour of an anticlimax, the tang of the lack of closure on your tongue. You file the night away as triumph, though it sure as hell feels like a defeat. 

It's not you who drags you back here the same day next year. You haven't spared a single thought for _him_ in hundreds of sols and you are not going to start it now as the annual commemoration of an uninteresting event is approaching. But Ransom holds you hostage and Glass hijacks the controls and Duke is pushing your face into the mess you've made. _Look at what you've done,_ he demands as you stare into the mirror. It's the first time you've notice that your face lacks something, even when made up beautifully, like you are but a cloth washed and wrung too many times. You are reminded of the fact that you haven't been with someone else in however many sols and you blame it on the lines around you mouth and eyes, acting like it wasn't a choice. That man is not a neo methamphetamine, goddamnit. It can't be that you are so utterly hooked on him, you declare. You have half a mind to drag a random stranger in bed with you, to show that you still can, to further desecrate that cursed cot and half a mind to burn the room, the floor, the whole bleeding building to the ground. But you are contemptuous of the desolation of arson so you spend the night stone cold sober, watching some inane stream (something about werewolves in orbit), eyes glued firmly on the screen, never fluttering to the door, not waiting for someone singular to suddenly enter, most certainly not. There is no painful rasp in the back of your throat as you raise from your slumber the next morning to a painfully empty bed beside you. 

The next hundreds of sols fly past in a flurry and you gamble harder than ever in every aspect of your life. You plug holes on your sinking ship with risks. You cross many bridges you never thought you would. You show up to the job inebriated. You get caught on camera. You build up a debt. You have more partners than you can remember and you ignore how every single climax seems to bleed a little more of you away. You take anything that promises a shred of relief, any chemical, man, hustle. There's no satisfaction for you anywhere in the universe, but it keeps you busy at least. 

So you sob like someone who'd actually been kidnapped when you find yourself in the same hotel room on the anniversary and you bravely toe the line between intoxication and alcohol poisoning all night. Morning finds you in a messy puddle of your own self and if you'd known a way to crawl out of your literal skin you'd do it gladly there and then. But every alter ego seems to have betrayed you and you doubt that further splitting your personality would help. Because no matter what, every version of you still loves Juno Steel. 

So you flaunt him like a battle wound from then on and when you meet Buddy Aurinko shortly after, still bleeding, you throw his name in as a reference, as casually as you can. Hyperion is a small place and you assume that Buddy would have heard of him. And you don't choke when she smiles and says, " _What a coincidence…"_ and you certainly don't black out very nearly when she tells you. You don't think about capitulating there and then. This is mere business and you have debts to pay. You can file it, file _him_ away, put him in a compartment and fill that with concrete to the brim. 

And you are fine as you drape your frame over the hood of the Ruby 7. And you are fine as the martian dust settles and he finally gathers his breath. You don't let all those compartments come crashing down as you watch him notice you, when you see his handsome, ragged face again. 

It's not your turn to lose your breath, to skip a beat. You remind yourself that you are prohibited to forgive.

And you are not at all surprised when you try and fail to stop yourself from doing so. 


End file.
